To the uninitiated, The Giver will seem like yet another dystopian teen movie aimed squarely at the flock who turned The Hunger Games and Divergent into box-office juggernauts. But the big-screen adaptation of Lois Lowry’s 1993 Newbery award-winning book predates the latter two by many years.

If anything, it could be said that Hunger Games and Divergent were very loosely inspired by The Giver.

But whereas the more recent big-screen adaptations of teen lit have dolloped lots of action over a social message, The Giver tries to present a more elevated teenage story on what it means to be human.

Of course the presence of Jeff Bridges (in the titular role) and Meryl Streep is meant to give the film added dramatic heft; it may even get a few grownups into the theatre.

Directed by Philip Noyce (Clear and Present Danger; Patriot Games), the film is set in a futuristic world in which humans have become emotionally neutered. The characters live a black-and-white existence that eschews love. All their daily interactions are heavily regimented.

They have no sense of the past, and their futures are written by the Elders. No one living in this utopia can grow up to be something of their own choosing, because everything is preordained, and sameness is the brush that colours the community. Inhabitants take state-ordered drugs everyday to dull emotions, and common human history has been erased completely.

It’s as if everyone has been turned into unfeeling zombies — and they don’t even know it.

The action picks up as a trio of teens are about to be given their assignments. Jonas (played by Maleficent’s Brenton Thwaites) becomes the city’s sole receiver of memory. He will learn all about mankind’s fall from grace from The Giver and pass that knowledge on to the Chief Elder (Streep). His two friends — Fiona (Odeya Rush) and Asher (Cameron Monaghan) become a nurturer and a drone pilot respectively.

The Giver tells Jonas to stop taking his injections every day and he starts to see things differently.

The pair spend hours sitting across from one another holding hands as Jonas slowly begins to understand the nature of human experience.

He starts to feel love for Fiona, and a toddler who is not growing fast enough and destined for death. He questions his parents (played by Katie Holmes and Alexander Skarsgard), who chastise him.

Lingering as a spectre, is the fate of the last receiver of memory (played by Taylor Swift).

So Jonas takes it upon himself to try and “save” his family and his community from their own perfection by escaping to Elsewhere.

This third act adds a requisite sprinkle of action to The Giver’s anti-totalitarian allegory. But after a stable start and gorgeous visuals (it looks like an Apple ad), Michael Mitnick and Robert B. Weide’s script starts to unravel.

There’s laughable dialogue and the final scene makes it clear the writers didn’t know how to solve the book’s ambiguous ending.